Monday, December 03, 2007

New Labour’s ‘whiter than white’ is now stained with Brown

When one recalls the unrelenting war of attrition on the cursed theme of ‘sleaze’ which ultimately brought down John Major’s government - money in brown envelopes, backhanders, ‘cash for questions’ – Labour knew it was writing a new and powerful narrative for political corruption, which they deployed mercilessly to devastating effect in order to consign the Conservative Party to opposition for a decade. Yet the questions surrounding the internal finances of New Labour are every bit as serious, if not more so. For while the Conservative Party’s ‘sleaze’ was concerned with the greedy behaviour of certain spear-carrying corrupt individuals, that of New Labour is concerned with the nefarious activities of the protagonists; the illegal activities of very senior officials; in short, the culture of the whole New Labour edifice.

Labour introduced new rules on party funding in a conceited, holier-than-thou, pharisaical manner. The sight of that party now breaking its own laws is sleazy indeed. When Tony Blair promised that his Party would be ‘whiter than white’, he would never have expected that these words would come back to haunt his party.

Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men's bones, and of all uncleanness (Mt 23:27). .

Power corrupts, so it is said, yet the plea from those senior Labour figures who are protesting their innocence is that they did not know the law. Well, it is also said that ignorance of the law is no defence, and their conceited smiles ought to be wiped from their faces. It is somewhat incredible that those officials whose very job it was to know the law in this precise area are insisting that they did not know it. And it beggars belief that the man who now occupies No 10 knew absolutely nothing about £650,000 worth of donations from property developer David Abrahams.

So why was Mr Abrahams using other people’s names to make his donations? And if he truly wanted anonymity, why does he feature in so many photographs mixing with the great and the good?

And the real tragedy of this saga is that whole sleazy story is being spun to persuade the electorate that the only way of dealing with the issues is to reform political funding. This is, apparently, the only way to rebuild confidence in the political system, because the perception is that all politicians lie, and that is unacceptable. So those same politicians pass further laws to dispel the perception, and then they break the very laws they pass, and then lie about breaking them. And then they complain further about lack of trust in politics and the erosion of people’s trust in them, and so the case for state funding, we are told, is inescapable, for it is the only means of eradicating the political parties’ reliance on donations.

The arguments for funding reform have nothing to do with the donations row, which is essentially about deception and corruption. If a wealthy donor is gifting £650,000 of his own money by using the names of real people who know nothing about the transactions, it is clearly and self-evidently a fraud. The truth is that New Labour had tried to reform funding through legislation, and then proceeded to attempt find ways around it.

And the real damage to the political process and the real erosion of trust comes not because of one man’s donations, but because Gordon Brown is about to follow Tony Blair as only the second serving prime minister to be questioned by the police. It is that stark reality which symbolises the rottenness, arrogance, pride and conceit which is at the heart of New Labour, and the real state of decay of this corrupt, hypocritical, pharisaical government.

What we are looking at here is human frailty. Even a suggestion that one party might be superior to another in matters of graft strikes me as naively hopeful. They all do it, always have done and, barring genetic engineering, always will. Ten years is enough for any party to be in power. It's time to kick this bunch of now-too-well-connected humans out in favor of the next who are less-well-connected-at-the-moment. Are we not truly blessed by living in a democracy?

It is that stark reality which symbolises the rottenness, arrogance, pride and conceit which is at the heart of New Labour, and the real state of decay of this corrupt, hypocritical, pharisaical government.

Which has been funded principally by Jews -- the modern-day descendants of the pharisees. And do you think they give such huge sums to New Labour without expecting a very great deal in return? Nor is it merely financial rewards they're after: His Grace should ask himself whether Christian "donors" would have accepted New Labour's relentlessly anti-Christian policies as readily as Jewish ones have done.

It was the kind of photo opportunity that, amid last week's Labour funding firestorm, both Gordon Brown and his hand-picked 'election resources' chief, Jon Mendelsohn, probably wish they had given a miss. It was not that their warm handclasp and beaming smiles at last April's lunch at the Banqueting Hall in Westminster were surprising. Quite the opposite. The event was a reminder not only of Brown's and Mendelsohn's shared history, but of a remarkably active Labour lobbying group that not only brought them together but had earlier pitted Mendelsohn, far less happily, with the third major figure in this funding crisis, David Abrahams.

The group is called Labour Friends of Israel. Founded in 1957, it has grown in the past half-century into probably the party's most successful parliamentary lobby group. At the party conference, other groups vie to lure delegates to fringe meetings, with the occasional promise of a cabinet minister. But the LFI's evening reception has seldom bothered to list its speaker in the conference handbook; it has gone without saying that its ministerial draw would be the MP for Sedgefield, Tony Blair - a mantle that at this year's conference seamlessly passed to the member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath, Gordon Brown. At April's lunch, where Brown was keynote speaker, Mendelsohn was ending a five-year stint as head of the organisation.

'Which has been funded principally by Jews -- the modern-day descendants of the pharisees. ....His Grace should ask himself whether Christian "donors" would have accepted New Labour's relentlessly anti-Christian policies as readily as Jewish ones have done.'

AND a secular anti-Jewish conspiracy theory

'a remarkably active Labour lobbying group that not only brought them together but had earlier pitted Mendelsohn, far less happily, with the third major figure in this funding crisis, David Abrahams.

The group is called Labour Friends of Israel. Founded in 1957, it has grown in the past half-century into probably the party's most successful parliamentary lobby group.'

Gordon Brown and Tony Blair are surely some of the worst hypocrites ever to walk the earth. I think they actually believe their own lies, or at least they did. That's how they managed to persuade people that New Labour was worth voting for. Genuine sincerity is a huge asset if you want people to listen to you and be convinced. They managed it for 10 years after all.

The trouble Gordon Brown has now - and I'm beginning to pity him - is that his whole huge structure of lies and deceit is crumbling and his essential emptiness is showing. His whited sepulchre has split open and shown the bones within. He's become a wretched, stumbling figure, lurching from one home-made crisis to the next, with no resources to cope. Nor has he the courage genuinely to repent errors and make amends. He's reaping what he and the other architects of New Labour sowed, and it's a bitter harvest.

On a different but slightly related note, I'm sure your Grace is aware of the “Christianophobia” debate scheduled by the Wrekin MP Mark Pritchard (may he be blessed for the courage to stand up on the issue). In similar vein, there is also a report about the loss of Nativity plays in schools. I would be interested to hear your Grace’s opinion on these matters.

if blair and brown are Christians then jesus was a phony?but if jesus was genuine then blair and brown are the the phoniest religious hypocrites of the 21st century and why?

because Christians are meant to live by the golden rule of loving your neighbor as yourself.how can you be loving your neighbor if you are sending people out to fight and kill them in the name of democracy?and then blair has the nerve to say he thought he was doing the right thing!!!!!this is a man that goes to church on a sunday and yet justifies war against another nation?and now that hypocrite has walked away from the mess he inspired and has been replaced by another hypocrite who also claims to be a Christian and yet was seen on the news yesterday praising the soldiers fighting in afganistan!praising them but yet underfunded them when he was chancellor!and to add insult to injury, whilst they deprive the soldiers of decent equipment, they are regularly being accused of misusing taxpayers money!and when the soldiers try to speak up about how they are treated, they are silenced by the government because they don't want the public to know what is really going on. i tell ya this and it is true, the British public made a serious error when they fell for the so called new lab our claptrap in 1997.they believed all that nonsense about "things can only get better"!and now they are regretting it!i don't trust any political party because they are all the same...they will say whatever will get them into power and once they are in we will have a hard time getting them out because they will just play the stupid British public like they have done since the year dot and we will fall for it all the time.we get what we ask for in Britain...labour promised change 11 years ago, is it the change you really wanted?

About His Grace:

Archbishop Cranmer takes as his inspiration the words of Sir Humphrey Appleby: ‘It’s interesting,’ he observes, ‘that nowadays politicians want to talk about moral issues, and bishops want to talk politics.’ It is the fusion of the two in public life, and the necessity for a wider understanding of their complex symbiosis, which leads His Grace to write on these very sensitive issues.

Cranmer's Law:

"It hath been found by experience that no matter how decent, intelligent or thoughtful the reasoning of a conservative may be, as an argument with a liberal is advanced, the probability of being accused of ‘bigotry’, ‘hatred’ or ‘intolerance’ approaches 1 (100%).”

Follow His Grace on

The cost of His Grace's conviction:

His Grace's bottom line:

Freedom of speech must be tolerated, and everyone living in the United Kingdom must accept that they may be insulted about their own beliefs, or indeed be offended, and that is something which they must simply endure, not least because some suffer fates far worse. Comments on articles are therefore unmoderated, but do not necessarily reflect the views of Cranmer. Comments that are off-topic, gratuitously offensive, libelous, or otherwise irritating, may be summarily deleted. However, the fact that particular comments remain on any thread does not constitute their endorsement by Cranmer; it may simply be that he considers them to be intelligent and erudite contributions to religio-political discourse...or not.

The Anglican Communion has no peculiar thought, practice, creed or confession of its own. It has only the Catholic Faith of the ancient Catholic Church, as preserved in the Catholic Creeds and maintained in the Catholic and Apostolic constitution of Christ's Church from the beginning.Dr Geoffrey Fisher, Archbishop of Canterbury, 1945-1961

British Conservatism's greatest:

The epithet of 'great' can be applied only to those who were defining leaders who successfully articulated and embodied the Conservatism of their age. They combined in their personal styles, priorities and policies, as Edmund Burke would say, 'a disposition to preserve' with an 'ability to improve'.

I am in politics because of the conflict between good and evil, and I believe that in the end good will triumph.Margaret Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher LG, OM, PC, FRS.(Prime Minister 1979-1990)

We have not overthrown the divine right of kings to fall down for the divine right of experts.Harold Macmillan, 1st Earl of Stockton, OM, PC.(Prime Minister 1957-1963)

Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.Sir Winston Churchill, KG, OM, CH, TD, FRS, PC (Can).(Prime Minister 1940-1945, 1951-1955)

I am not struck so much by the diversity of testimony as by the many-sidedness of truth.Stanley Baldwin, 1st Earl Baldwin of Bewdley, KG, PC.(Prime Minister 1923-1924, 1924-1929, 1935-1937)

If you believe the doctors, nothing is wholesome; if you believe the theologians, nothing is innocent; if you believe the military, nothing is safe.Robert Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury, KG, GCVO, PC.(Prime Minister 1885-1886, 1886-1892, 1895-1902)

I am a Conservative to preserve all that is good in our constitution, a Radical to remove all that is bad. I seek to preserve property and to respect order, and I equally decry the appeal to the passions of the many or the prejudices of the few.Benjamin Disraeli KG, PC, FRS, Earl of Beaconsfield.(Prime Minister 1868, 1874-1880)

Public opinion is a compound of folly, weakness, prejudice, wrong feeling, right feeling, obstinacy, and newspaper paragraphs.Sir Robert Peel, Bt.(Prime Minister 1834-1835, 1841-1846)

I consider the right of election as a public trust, granted not for the benefit of the individual, but for the public good.Robert Jenkinson, 2nd Earl of Liverpool.(Prime Minister 1812-1827)

Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.The Rt Hon. William Pitt, the Younger.(Prime Minister 1783-1801, 1804-1806)